[60] No place of this name is known in Normandy. It may refer to BRUCOURT, arrondissement of Pont-l'Evesque; and the correct reading of the MS. was perhaps Brieucort. See Robert de Brucourt's confirmation of the grants by Jeffery de Fervaques to Walsingham. About the same time a Gilbert de Brucourt gave lands at Fervaques to the abbey of Val-Richer. A.L.P. In the Red book—de balliâ de Oximis—'Gilbertus de Breuecourt 2 mil. regi de Pinu cum pertinent. Idem 1 mil. de fœdo Mort. in Cerenciis.' We afterwards find,—among those who 'serviunt ad custamentum domini,—'Gillebertus de Bruecort, senex, 4 partem de Colevill et Angervill.' Gilbert de Brucourt and Hugh his son appear in a charter to Troarn. Mém. Ant. Norm. viii. 238.
[61] COMBRAY, arrondissement of Falaise. At a later period lords of this name are among the benefactors of St Barbe-en-Auge and Fontenay.
[62] AULNAY. See note 22 last chapter. There are four communes of this name. Aulnay l'Abbaye, arrondissement of Vire, belonged in the twelfth century to the Says above mentioned, and Jourdain de Saye founded the abbey there in 1131. De Alneto is of common recurrence in early charters. There was also a house of Laune, de Alno, at Laulne near Lessay; see M. de Gerville's Recherches, ii. 241.
[63] There are nine FONTENAYS in Normandy. If we are to presume that the one here alluded to is Fontenay-le-Marmion, near Caen, the lord of Marmion would seem mentioned twice; though Fontenay was possibly then held by some one under the Marmions. The Marmion at Hastings is considered to have been Robert; not Roger, as Wace says. There was a Roger afterwards, who is named in a charter of king Richard to Grestain. In the Red book, Robertus Marmion is among the defaulters. In the Bayeux inquest, 'feodum Marmion et Rogeri et in Buevilla 1 mil.'
[64] RUBERCY, arrondissement of Bayeux. It appears that when the abbey of Longues was founded in 1168 by Hugh Wac, he was lord of Rebercil, and gave lands there to the foundation. This Hugh was probably the same as married Emma daughter of Baldwin Fitz-Gilbert (founder, in 1138, of Bourne, in Lincolnshire), and grand-daughter of a Gilbert, apparently cotemporary with the conquest. A.L.P. Hugh's son, also called Baldwin, appears in the Monasticon, and in the charters of Longues; Mém. Ant. Norm. viii.
[65] See VIEUX-MOLAY before; this being perhaps a repetition of the same person, lord of MOLLEI-BACON, arrondissement of Bayeux. William Bacon, who in 1082 endowed the abbey of the Trinity at Caen, answers to this period. The first of the Bacons known in England was Richard Bacon, nephew of Ranulf earl of Chester, and founder of the priory of Roucester in Staffordshire. M. Le Prevost asks why the English Bacons deduced their origin from a Grimbald, cousin of William Warren, in preference to the well known Bacons of Molay? See as to the history of Mollei-Bacon the Abbé Beziers, in Nouvelles Recherches sur la France, Paris, 1766, vol. i. Among the defaulters in the Red book is 'Rogerus Bathon [de Bacon in Duchesne] pro quartâ parte in Campigneio'—Campigny-les-Bois, arrondissement of Bayeux? This Roger Bacon seems to have been brother to Philip de Colombieres; see Mémoires des Antiq. Norm. viii. 153. 441.
[66] Brampton takes the safe side in protesting against being accountable for the baptismal names of the early Norman barons; in specifying which Wace has, we have seen, often erred. There is a charter to Bernay in the Mém. Ant. Norm. iv. 381, granted, it would seem, by duke Richard II. at the great council at which he, in 1027, made disposition of his dutchy in favour of his son. Besides dignitaries of the church, it is signed by one hundred and twenty-one viscounts, barons, &c. of whom all, with the exception of those distinguished by offices, and Tustingus, (probably Turstin-Goz), Goffredus Wac and Gillebertus Veil in (if indeed the two last are not each the names of two distinct persons) are called merely by their baptismal names. The list is very curious, forming a complete parliament or council, of about one hundred and thirty magnates. Benoit, in his short account of the exploits of the army, which will be found in our appendix, excuses himself from enumeration of the chiefs who composed it, by saying,
En treis quaere [cahiers] de parchemin
N'en venisse je pas a fin.
[67] Hired men.
[68] See previous note on TURSTIN FITZ-ROU, the standard bearer.